


I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

by nighty_nyquil



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Light BDSM, M/M, and julian gets his feelings hurt about 8000 times, mild violence, this is all fairly vanilla
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-31 00:31:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12664650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nighty_nyquil/pseuds/nighty_nyquil
Summary: This he has always known: Asra was never, ever going to love him.





	I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

**Author's Note:**

> > I love you only because it’s you the one I love;
>> 
>> I hate you deeply, and hating you
>> 
>> Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
>> 
>> Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.
> 
> \--I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You, Pablo Neruda 

God damn him—both of them. Asra, for existing in the same impossible space of time as he does while the universe is an age beyond counting and a size beyond measuring. And Julian, for throwing himself into another collar he enjoys calling love, like a horse at the end of a whip.

The difference between he and this imaginary horse is, of course, that Julian _loves_ it: the sting, the whip, the hand holding it. Put a bit in his mouth, spank him on the ass, and he’ll whinny if you want.

 _Neeeiiigh! Now, harder_.

“Ilya,” Asra hums, cracking a single eye from where he dozes against the bark of the willow tree in the garden.

“Hmm?” he answers back, cross-legged on the soft grass and enjoying the kiss of the sun filtered down through the switches on his bare, pale neck. He takes a bite of his sandwich—some silly finger sandwich with cucumbers that tastes good but make his hands look and feel gargantuan and clumsy. Funny, the texture of it is suddenly off.

Asra’s eye slips back closed and he sighs with a frown. “I was going to warn you about that—there are ants on your sandwich.”

Yep, mhmm, Julian feels them _crawling around his mouth_. Immediately, he ducks over and spits it out on a fancy linen napkin, trying to keep his eyes from watering as he retches and rinses his mouth one, two, three times with expensive mineral water from a cut crystal carafe.

Asra laughs in his pitying, indulgent way, his mouth soft with a smile. He stretches one lean leg out and runs the ball of his foot down Julian’s shin. “Ohh, Ilya. What am I supposed to do with you?”

He wants to take hold of Asra’s ankle, run his hands up the leg until they come to Asra’s hips, and he is leaning over him. He wonders what Asra would look like on his back in this light, he wonders how he would look looming in it.

He wonders if Asra would scowl.

He hopes he wouldn’t.

Instead, Julian wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and looks anywhere but.

Asra’s foot stills, resting on Julian’s knee, and for a moment Julian thinks he’s fallen asleep until he starts to speak with fondness as warm and soft as warm butter on fresh bread, “I had a friend who traveled a lot, and they told me there are places all over where the people eat ants, and spiders, and grasshoppers. All sorts of bugs. My friend liked their ants dipped in chocolate.”

“People eat _spiders_?” Julian bleats, his skin crawling.

Asra laughs his silver bell laugh, the sun catching his dimples. Julian isn’t sure if he’s ever been more besotted with any one person.

He tries to calm his pulse and really listen when Asra informs him, “Yeah, of course. People fry tarantulas in hot oil, and it makes them crispy. It’s supposed to taste like soft shell crab— _taaasty_ ,” he teases, grabbing Julian’s pant leg with his bare toes, and laughing even louder when Julian’s shiver comes out more like a jolt.

His eyes open into violet slits and his smile turns into a smirk. “I wonder if you’d eat one if I asked?” he purrs, cocking a brow in challenge.

Julian’s head feels like it’s caught fire, and there’s no keeping the heat off his face or the stammer out of his voice when he says, “Who knows? I don’t, you don’t even have a spider—or, what was it, a tarantula? Much less a fried one. Maybe we’ll never, ever know.”

“If I found you a fried tarantula, Ilya,” Asra asks, ignoring the outburst, “would you eat it?”

 _Yes_. _Right from your hand._

“I’d…I’d try it,” he concedes, and this seems to please Asra, eye slipping shut again as he settles back against his tree. Julian can’t stop—

Truthfully, he’s not sure _what_ he can’t stop, he just knows he can’t stop it.

\+ + +

Sometimes, Julian lies awake at night, shamelessly making up scenarios that he’d normally crush in the daylight. He doesn’t only imagine sex, but, _good god_ , the sex is fantastic. He imagines a life—a complete life. Kissing first thing in the morning and last thing at night, holding and being held, being half of a team.

He lets his mind wander. He lets his pulse sprint. He lets his mouth go dry. He lets his hands tremble. He lets his guts shimmer. He lets himself smile and imagine.

He lets himself be wildly and painfully in love with a person that will never return it, thinking about a sudden heel turn and a life that would burn fairytales to ash.

Then, come morning, he lets himself feel ashamed.

\+ + +

It’s late October and Asra’s mood is blacker than the torrential downpour that’s bombarded Vesuvia for the better part of a week. He withdraws more and more completely by the day, as if counting down to some monstrous event that might end up being the death of him.

Julian finds him out in the garden, crouching behind the willow tree. His shirt’s soaked to the point of transparency, sticking to the bronze skin over his trembling shoulders. Even Julian’s saturated under all of his layers, carrying his overcoat in the crook of his arm. “Asra, what are you doing? You’re going to get sick—”

“Ilya—there’s an island six days from here,” Asra warbles, his teeth chattering. His hands don’t tremor, they vibrate. On his right hand, he pinches the web between his thumb and pointer finger with such pressures it blanches his hand. He won’t look up. “It has white beaches. The water around it’s blue like bottle glass, and the houses are all the color of bones and teeth.”

Julian almost reaches out to touch him—just a hand to the shoulder—but he doesn’t have the courage to follow through. There’s something in him that worries Asra will go up in smoke if touched in this state. “It sounds beautiful, really, but—I’m a doctor, Asra. Maybe I’m not wrong about you catching your death out here, it’s easier than you’d think—”

“I can take you there,” the magician bleats, teeth chattering. “Right now. We can pack up and leave, right now, right this second. No—if we’re leaving now, we’re not going to bother packing. We’ll just go with what’s on our backs. Walk out of the palace. Never look back.”

“You’re…you’re being…” _frightening_. He’s being frightening, and Julian has the feeling he’s being tested—asked a question under a question.

Asra is ethereal, and can very well be flighty and flinty, but he’s never once suggested running away from the palace. While he has no love or warm feeling for the Count, he adores the Countess—he _loves_ the woman he calls Nadi, and he wouldn’t leave her to the plague.

Even if he didn’t, he’s insinuated more than once he needs something, resources Julian thinks, he can only get here.

“My friend,” Asra starts, jarring after his pause for Julian’s answer, “says it’s beautiful there. They had a necklace, made of blue glass, and that’s—the water’s the same color, they said. I’ve never been…I just thought—I don’t know. The rain doesn’t feel like it’s supposed to anymore.”

“It’ll—it’ll clear up, it always does.” Desperation claws up Julian’s throat, colder than the rain that’s plastered his hair to his skull. He needs some clarity, even just once, just a straight answer.

It’s an easy motion to slide the coat from his shoulders and drape it over Asra. He doesn’t even care that it drags in the rainwater. “I’m worried about you,” he admits, trying to keep his mouth from outrunning him to say something stupid and ruin everything. “If—if there’s something wrong, I, uhm—you could, you know, tell me. I would listen. I’d try to help, as much as I can, for what that’s worth to you.”

Asra says nothing. He stays as still as the statuaries apart from his shaking.

“Asra?”

The magician finally releases his own hand, ducking his head and raking his hands through his curls. “I—it’s nothing,” he grunts, standing so suddenly Julian has to stumble back a step. “I think the weather’s getting to me. The sun’s been gone for too long.”

“Asra—”

A pair of shining eyes are turned on him, narrowed in a self-deprecating set, but there is little light to them. Julian feels, all at once, very ugly. Someone like Asra—someone that beautiful and impossible—is not someone who should look at someone like Julian with any kind of familiarity.

“Let’s go back inside and dry off,” the magician says, sounding drained. “We’ll get some food, laze away the rest of the afternoon keeping each other warm.”

Julian almost fights against it, wanting an answer _for once_ , but Asra reaches out and takes his hand, lacing their fingers as he tilts his head toward the library. “Come on, Ilya, I want to thank you for checking on me.”

Freezing and miserable, for more than one reason, Julian nods his head and follows.

\+ + +

He loves Asra. He loves Asra so much he thinks he might collapse under the weight of it. And he wants to help him, but Asra won’t let him. He won’t even tell him what the problem is.

Asra is quiet, cool, and lithe, slipping into the spaces between shadows like a cat burglar—like he was made to fit there. Julian gets the terrible feeling that he’s fighting some kind of—some kind of war or _something_ , and he’s the only opponent defending his side of the conflict.

Julian’s so scared for him that he can’t think straight. Not that he can really think straight around him, or far away from him, or at all, or ever— _but the point stands_.

Asra’s alone in a fight, and he is _never, ever_ going to ask for backup.

And Julian, being the sucker he knows he is, is already hellbent on doing something breathtakingly stupid if it means keeping him safe. It doesn’t even matter that Asra doesn’t and will never feel the same way to him.

\+ + +

Julian’s relationship with sex is all over the place, and he will be the absolute first person to admit it. He likes it however he can get it, but it almost always feels the best when it hurts.

And Asra is so, so, _so_ good at hurting him.

Julian isn’t—“AACK—SIX!”—altogether sure where Asra got the—“MRM-MM—SEVEN!”—teak…what _is_ this thing?—“MMF-F-FUCK—EIGHT!”—Julian’s not sure where he _the teak rod_ —“AHH—NINE!”—but he is _thoroughly_ enjoying it.

Asra pauses, drawing back his arm once more, lifting Julian’s head by the fist knotted in his hair, chuckling, “A little louder, Ilya. I don’t think the Count’s horses can hear you yet.”

It makes a sizzling noise cutting through the air, and when it strikes Julian’s naked back, his eyes water, his mouth drools, and there is no room for thinking in his conscious mind. He climaxes _hard_ , bucking against the restraint his laced trousers force against him. What was that _embarrassing_ sound coming out of his mouth? A gasp? A sob? A cough?

Ooh, he hopes it wasn’t a cough. It would be bad form for a plague doctor to catch the plague.

“What number was that, Ilya?”

He makes a wheezing noise in answer, the welts on his back thumping so hard that his brain feels like a second heart. He finds himself seduced by the hypnotizing patterns his mind injects into the carpet under his knees.

“Come again, Ilya?” Asra asks, using his grip to turn Julian’s head and force it back to meet his eyes.

“Ten,” he croaks. “Ten.”

“Good. That was good for me, Ilya. Was it good for you? Did you finish?”

Said and done, Asra helps him back onto his feet and directs him to the bed, easing himself flat on his belly, face buried in luxurious down pillows that smell of rich smoke. They’re in Asra’s room tonight, as they are most nights, because Julian seeks him out more often than Asra comes looking for him.

Asra bends down to Julian’s eyelevel, allowing him to watch him speak a small sphere of clear ice into existence, dropping spit-slick from his full lips right into his palm. It’s entrancing, and if Julian wasn’t as spent as he is, that might’ve gotten him hot and bothered again. As it stands, he’s so boneless he probably couldn’t walk to the water basin to clean himself up, much less throw himself into a frenzy for a second round.

The ice and Asra’s quiet hands are soothing on Julian’s savaged back, and he has to bite back tears in the face of the utter _tenderness_ being wrought upon him.

Even as dopey and post-coital as he is, he cannot say something that will upset the precarious balance he and Asra maintain. His is the footing that is poor, because Asra knows _exactly_ where he stands in this arrangement, and has made it clear in no uncertain terms. Julian knows he is the one that is too eager, too enraptured, and too foolhardy in his hopefulness.

It’s never going to be more than this, and he wishes he would learn.

Once he’s able to move again, he cleans himself up and takes the tea that Asra offers him, completely unsurprised that it’s lapsang souchong. They stretch out on piles of pillows, watching the moon hang fat and low in the sky through the window, both with the understanding that they’ll part for the night and return to their more public dynamic come daybreak.

Carelessly, Asra moves his hand and the lanterns in his room brighten up only enough to force the mood to shift, though he doesn’t say much. He’s the sort that’s content with quiet, not like Julian, who could and would talk himself to death if it meant not having to endure idle silence.

“You have a scar on your hand,” he says, after swallowing a mouthful of too warm tea and spotting the odd marking. He knows he’s pushing his luck and likely not going to get an answer, but he throws caution to the wind and asks, “That’s a weird place to get one. Is there a story behind it?”

Asra trades his grip on his teacup, turning his hand under the light to consider the scar on the web between his thumb and pointer finger. “Oh,” he laughs, shrugging and filled with warmth. “I had a friend bite me there. See the punctures, here and here? That’s where their wolf teeth bit through.”

He can very clearly see the marks under his knuckles, and they look very much like an enormous piercings, or the ungromitted eyelets of a boot. The entire thing looks fairly old, colorless pits with a few, equally colorless divots in-between. “Aaand can I ask _why,_ exactly, your friend bit you there?” he drawls, leaning forward, despite the way the skin on his back hisses in protest.

Asra rolls his eyes and smiles, hunkering down in his pillow and looking ready for a deep sleep. “We asked each other to. It’s an old superstition where they came from.” He flexes his hand and really looks at it, brows furrowing. “It’s funny that you bring it up. I haven’t…thought about it, not in a while, anyway.”

He sounds distinctly like he’s lying, but how on earth could Julian call him on it? It would be in bad taste, and Asra would never speak about it again.

But, like magic (ha-ha), Asra glances back up at him, throws a brilliant smile and a liquid shrug his way, and dismisses his thoughts. “Anyway, you know how it goes, even scars get so old you can look straight at them and not see them at all.”

\+ + +

It’s been _years_.

It’s been _years_ , and he can still see _every single one_ of his scars. They never go away, and they are never forgotten, because he will never get another scar _ever again_.

He’d figured Asra as wanting for a submissive— _hah_ , _hahaha!_ —and there was his apprentice, the polar opposite of everything he was made of—more than six feet tall, unearthly like she was a thing plucked from a deep the sun forgot—wielding phosphorescent magic in one hand, and a broken bottle turned face-shredder in the other.

But Asra isn’t here, no. No, of course he isn’t. No, he’s not _here_ , he’s _somewhere else_ , but _he_ has a warm, safe place to come home to. Someone that would fight like a dog on his behalf to protect _him_.

It’s all come to this. Years spent going mad for answers, sleeping in places not fit for roaches, eating food scavenger animals would rebuke, running until his lungs might turn inside-out.

Bleeding.

And bleeding.

And _fucking bleeding_ —

“ _Tell me where the witch is_ ,” he demands through clenched teeth.

“I’ll be telling your _fucking_ _corpse_ ,” Asra’s apprentice growls, her wide, thin mouth peeling back to a carnivore’s excited grin, putting four golden and inhumanely large canines on flashing display as she turns her grip on the face-shredder.

He sees it now, but he won’t put it together until much, _much_ later—even later than a painful talk on the docks, even later than his accepting her gift of a kiss that will never end.

On her hand, on the webbing between her thumb and pointer finger, are the scars of teeth driven past skin and into flesh.

An old superstition, an old wives’ tale, knitted into the taupe-dappled, corpse-pale flesh of a well-traveled Scorpio born in a late October downpour, who is content to eat just about anything, with a necklace of blue bottle glass around her neck.

This he has always known: Asra was never, ever going to love him.

This he will come to know: she was always, _always_ the reason why.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I'm Rags, and this steaming pile of nonsense is the first thing I've released on the public in ten years. What's a motif or a theme or visually pleasing formatting? I don't know her.
> 
> If you like yelling about being sad, I'm [@former-lushemployee-asra](http://former-lushemployee-asra.tumblr.com) on tumblr, and I love yelling and being yelled at about almost anything.


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